Only Children

by Rafael Yglesias

  At last, they had been given permission to go to the hospital. It was now three o’clock in the morning. Nina had been in labor for twelve hours. He felt absolutely spent. But the end was in sight— provided he could find a taxi.

  When they got in the elevator, even Nina seemed more relaxed. “You wait in the lobby,” he said. “I’ll go to the avenue for a cab.”

  “Don’t leave me with Gomez to have the baby,” she said, referring to their weird night doorman.

  “That’s the idea,” he answered as the doors opened to the lobby.

  She grabbed his arm. “Please.”

  “Are you nuts? Of course not.”

  The elevator doors began to close. Eric held them back. He nodded for her to exit. “I’ll tell Gomez to get the cab.”

  “That’s a good idea.” She smiled like a child and moved out confidently. But once in the lobby, she stopped in her tracks. Gomez was sprawled in the tall-backed oak chair facing the doors. His head had flopped to one side, his mouth was open, and his chest rose and fell in the steady rhythm of a deep sleep.

  Nina hissed as she breathed in sharply: “Oh!”

  Eric looked at his watch. “Contraction begins,” he said loud, hoping to arouse Gomez.

  “This isn’t bad,” she whispered.

  “You don’t have to whisper,” Eric said.

  Nina backed herself against the wall, closed her eyes, and took deep, slow breaths.

  “Fifteen seconds!” Eric almost shouted, keeping his eyes on Gomez. “Contraction is building.” Gomez snorted, lifted his head slightly, yawned, and stretched his neck, apparently about to wake up. But then Gomez nuzzled his shoulder and resumed sleeping without having opened his eyes. “Great! The entire PLO could be entering the building!”

  “Shhh!” Nina said, and started to pace, quickening her respiration.

  “Gomez!” Eric said.

  “Leave him alone—ah!” Nina rushed to the mailboxes, put her back to them, bent forward as much as she could, and pushed against them.

  A long, inquisitive grunt came out of Gomez: “Hmmmm?” But no movement.

  “Thirty seconds,” Eric said furiously. “Contraction is peaking.”

  “Comeon comeon comeon comeon!” Nina chanted, her eyes shut tight, squeezing her hands together.

  “We have to get to the hospital,” Eric said to the ceiling.

  “We’ll get there, we’ll get there, we’ll get there.” Nina spoke through her huffs and puffs.

  “Forty-five seconds. Contraction is subsiding.” Eric cupped his hands and shouted toward the doorman, “Gomez! Wake up!”

  “Huh?” Gomez started up, tried to right himself by grabbing the chair’s arms, but his left hand slid on the polished wood and brought the weight of his body against it, so that slowly, but inevitably, despite Gomez’s cry of surprise and despair, he and the chair toppled over.

  Nina laughed briefly. The pain cut it short, but she laughed again after a gasp. Eric, however, ignored the calamity, calling out: “Gomez, my wife is in labor. Get a cab.”

  Gomez, a tall, lean man with a solemn face, looked up from his position. “I can’t get up.”

  “Something broken?” Jesus, Eric thought. I’m going to have to take both of them to the hospital.

  “No, no. The chair. Get it off me.”

  “Sixty seconds. Contraction is over.” Eric walked over and lifted the heavy chair. Gomez crawled a few feet away before getting up. He looked at the chair suspiciously.

  “I told Gary to get another one. That one’s dangerous.”

  “Are you all right? Listen, she’s in labor. Can you get us a cab?”

  “What?” Gomez looked at Nina, alarmed. “What?”

  “We have to go to the hospital, so—”

  “Right away, right away.” Gomez hustled out the door.

  Eric sighed and returned to Nina’s side. She looked pale. “Is he getting a cab?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I just hope he doesn’t get run over.”

  Nina laughed reluctantly, as though it hurt. “That was funny.”

  Gomez returned, jogging in, distraught. He stopped inside the lobby doors and looked at them.

  “You got one?” Eric asked.

  “There are no cabs.” Gomez said tentatively, as though trying out a lie.

  “It’s three in morning! You have to look longer than that. I’ll go—”

  “No, no.” Gomez turned to leave again.

  “We’ll both go,” Nina said. “I’m fine.”

  “Okay,” Eric said. He picked up her bag and extended his arm for her to take.

  Gomez looked agitated. “Excuse me, excuse me,” he said. Gomez went up to Eric and pulled him a few feet away from Nina.

  Eric was outraged by this physical familiarity. It’s what I get for being a regular guy with them, he thought. “What are you doing?”

  “There are bad boys out there,” Gomez whispered.

  He’s flipped, Eric thought. He’d always suspected Gomez was the night man because he was a nut on Thorazine and couldn’t handle the heavier social tasks of the day shift. “What?”

  “Hoodlums.”

  “We won’t get mugged, Gomez.”

  “No! Right outside now!”

  Eric looked Gomez full in the face, directly into his eyes. As he did, he realized it was the first time. Although he had often been waylaid by Gomez on late-night excursions for ice cream and been forced to dawdle at the elevator discussing the fortunes of the Mets, or the Giants, Eric had managed to keep his eyes averted, away from the final bond of seeing into Gomez’s eyes, to know whatever might be there: shy worry; the glitter of excitement; the dull glaze of sadness. For Eric, once that contact happened, the person became a responsibility, someone to whom one could never again be rude without the aftereffect of guilt, someone whose feelings had to be considered with each request. Obviously that would be a grave inconvenience with doormen.

  Gomez’s eyes were scared, and weary from the fear, as though he had conquered the dread repeatedly, only to lose to it each time, so that the challenge held no prospect for victory.

  My God, for years he’s been the night man living in terror. Why doesn’t he keep the door locked and stay awake? He’d feel safer.

  And now, on top of his cowardice, unable to get them the cab, Gomez was embarrassed. It was his job, after all, to provide them with security. Instead, he was forcing Eric to take the risk. “I’ll be all right,” Eric assured him, and meant it. He doubted Gomez’s ability to judge danger. And besides, Eric had grown up, as he often told people, in a tough neighborhood, had had his share of street fights, and was a big man. Prowling the city at night, being six-six and two hundred pounds, he’d never been hassled. And he didn’t expect to be.

  “They have a knife,” Gomez whispered intensely, glancing at Nina.

  “Honey, what’s the matter?” Nina called out.

  “You’d better wait here. It’ll only take a minute for me to find a cab.”

  “I’ll stand at the door and watch you,” Gomez said with enthusiasm. He obviously felt better that he could offer some help.

  Nina approached, her big stomach in the lead, towing the rest of her slowly. “I want to go with you.”

  “Honey! It’ll take a second. Stay here.” Eric let go of the overnight bag (to have his hands free) and quickly walked out the inner-lobby doors to prevent any further discussion.

  As he approached the exit to the street, he heard them. There was a radio playing rock music and a rhythmic tapping on something metallic and hollow. Eric decided to walk out boldly, not glance at them or move in the opposite direction, but to behave as though they were harmless—as, indeed, he assumed they were. At least to him.

  The emptiness of Ninth Street was disconcerting; usually busy during the day and well into the evening with cars and cabs going crosstown, at three in the morning there was no traffic to be seen in the orange haze of the streetlamps. The only life was the presence of three black teenagers clust
ered around a fire hydrant. Their heads turned at the sound of Eric’s exit from the building. In the harsh light their faces loomed at him, almost glowing. One backed away immediately, his arms hanging loosely, ready for flight. The tallest had a joint in his hand; yellow smoke burned from its tip directly into his right eye. He closed the lid deliberately, a puppet winking, but didn’t move the joint.

  “Hey, man!” he called out, greeting a friend. But his body was still, ominous.

  “Any fucking cabs out here?” Eric said, and walked past them, off the sidewalk, looking east up Ninth. There were no cars in sight for more than two blocks, and only a pair of forlorn headlights in the distance promised a break. But even that wasn’t a cab. Eric cursed himself for using the garage in the building. It was closed from two to six in the morning. On Tenth Street there was all-night parking, but that cost an extra thirty bucks a month. The rule of going first class—any attempt to escape its tyranny ended in punishment. This little attempt at a savings had never once been inconvenient, but what a ghastly accounting there might be tonight.

  He heard the kids whisper behind him in a rapid chorus, punctuated by a contemptuous snort of laughter. “I don’t take cabs, man!” the tall one said. Eric had his back to the teenagers—his shoulders tingled, as though developing radar to protect him from surprise—and he couldn’t tell if the comment was seriously addressed to him. He decided to ignore it.

  The traffic lights in the distance turned green, but apart from the lone car, no others appeared. He turned around to look toward the uptown avenue. Only after Eric found himself staring at the trio did he realize it seemed like a reaction to the leader’s remark.

  “You hear what I say?” the tall one spoke. He sucked on the joint and offered it to the others, stretching his arm behind him, the joint pinched daintily between two fingers. It was taken.

  Eric didn’t want to be this person standing outside a building with a wife in labor confronted by the three stoned black teenagers spoiling for an incident. The sociological logic of the situation, reducing him and them to blank numbers in a simple equation, undoing the romance, the pleasant fear, of him and Nina at the instant of his child’s beginning—this was to be the memory? These stupid kids menacing him? His conversion from a young street-smart New Yorker to some timid bozo unable to get his wife to the hospital?

  “Look!” Eric yelled. “My wife is in labor! I’m gonna get a fucking cab! Do you understand!” he shouted at an even louder volume than he had begun. It did him good, expelling not only tension but fear as well into the orange haze. The kids stood still, almost like statues, children absorbing an expected reproof. “Either help me, kill me, or get the fuck out of here!”

  “Hey, man,” the tall one said slowly.

  The lobby door opened. Nina appeared, carrying the little bag, its size ludicrous by contrast with her bloated stomach. “Eric,” she said in a calm, intimate voice, as if they were in bed together going over the events of the day. “Let’s start walking. Maybe we’ll get one on the way.”

  Behind her, skulking in the doorway, Gomez shouted in a tone of nervous bravado: “The cops are parked around the corner! At the deli. Maybe they give you a ride.”

  What a stupid transparent lie, Eric thought, disgusted.

  The teenagers thought so too. The one who until now had backed away, had seemed most ready to flee laughed explosively and stepped forward to answer Gomez. “Kiss my ass, motherfucker,” he said, giggling from the dope.

  “Watch your language!” Gomez scolded like an old woman.

  “I don’t watch shit!” the giggler screamed, extending his right hand, a whooshing sound announcing the switchblade’s existence before the orange light glowed on its surface.

  Eric felt himself shrink, his huge frame, filled out by his studious exercising, broad at the shoulder, narrow at the waist, his long arms, powerful enough to snap the kid’s arm in half, his thick thighs, and elastic calves, strong enough to bound over in a stride: the adult renovation on the puny body of his childhood detonated in a puff of demolition, reversing history, replacing the skyscraper with frail clapboard. He was little again.

  We’re going to die and I can’t stop it.

  Gomez seemed to lose his mind, his former panic replaced with insane boldness. He came out of the lobby doors and shouted at the kids: “What’s the matter with you! You crazy! You want to go to jail!”

  “I’ll open you up!” the kid said, and made two slashes in the air to illustrate how.

  Get between them, Eric told himself.

  “You punk! You don’t have the cojones!” Gomez answered.

  Nina walked away from the group, straight at Eric and the gutter. “There’s a cab!” she said with delight, and no fear, in her voice.

  Eric turned to see a free taxi glide across the street, its turning signal blinking, angling straight for him, a guided missile adjusting with its target’s dodges. He stepped back to preserve his toes. The driver stopped and smiled at him knowingly. “What hospital?”

  “Beth Israel,” Nina answered, and opened the door.

  “That’s easy,” the driver said.

  “I don’t want to fuck with you,” Eric heard Gomez say while Eric automatically followed Nina into the cab. The leader of the teenagers had turned to face the taxi, ready to challenge it. Gomez shouted and waved his hands disdainfully at the kid with the switchblade. The knife bearer remained in a melodramatic crouch, still pointing the blade where Gomez had stood earlier, ignoring the back and forth of Gomez’s angry pacing.

  “Trouble?” the driver asked them, staring at the scene. “Should we do something?”

  Nina leaned across Eric and rolled his window down. “We’re all right, Gomez! Thank you! Go to sleep!”

  The leader of the kids, his face as still as the impassive mask of a sentinel, moved his lips. “Good luck,” he said.

  Gomez seemed to pay no attention to Nina. He continued to lecture the switchblade holder. “What you mean making all this noise at night? People are sleeping!”

  “We can go,” Nina concluded. The driver nodded and pulled away, taking the turn at the corner without slowing, so the cab swung out wide. Nina toppled into Eric’s lap. She smiled wanly at him.

  And then her face scrunched up in pain. “Here comes another one,” she said.

  2

  DIANE WAS AFRAID. She studied the bubbles in the IV line, telling herself they couldn’t be air pockets that would enter her vein, travel to her heart, and stop it—but fearing anyway that they might be. And she hurt. A pain that had begun as a dull ache was now intense, pulsing from the base of her skull to her forehead, as if someone were trying to pry it off.

  She complained. Slowly, very slowly, her complaints were answered. The headache (what a diagnostic understatement of her agony) was a side effect of her epidural, she was told. Sometimes during surgery it moved around, becoming, in effect, a spinal tap, and led to some sort of fluid movement that caused a severe headache. They didn’t want to give her a potent painkiller; she got a part Tylenol, part codeine tablet instead. That merely reduced the wrenching, stabbing pain to a bruised, throbbing hurt—a taunting reminder of life without the top of her head coming off, thereby making the resumption of intense pain more dismaying. She always seemed to need the next dose of Tylenol/codeine an hour before she was allowed to have it.

  And then, any movement of the lower half of her torso was scary. Sometimes she suspected the incision in her belly wasn’t closed and her insides were spilling out. Usually her body sent a sharp order of distress, freezing her in place, wincing until the wave of nauseating weakness, soreness, and ache was overwhelmed by the oppressive pounding in her skull. It was then she felt grateful for the headache.

  She hated the television in her room. It was mounted above the molding, way up in the air, positioned for a platform bed that hadn’t been built. The location gave a better view of its dirty plastic bottom than the broadcast. When off, the blank screen appeared to be a gray that she s
peculated was a layer of dust. When she turned it on, the picture looked old, the colors from another era, the shape excessively curved, reminding her of being alone on Saturday mornings watching farm programs while her mother slept late.

  She dreaded visitors and phone calls. At her request, Peter had turned off the phone and told everyone but Diane’s mother and his parents and stepparents not to come for a few days. But Diane also resented the absence of company. Every desire and instinct were accompanied by an equally strong reluctance and revulsion.

  She felt deserted and betrayed by the world. Her doctor had refused to allow her to lie in with Byron until she felt stronger. She didn’t argue or even disagree. Still, it wasn’t her choice. Her baby had been carried off and was delivered only to be fed (or failing to feed) with an immediate announcement by the nurse of when he would be re-collected. Even her brief times alone with Byron made her aware of her failures. Byron seemed uninterested in eating, so she was useless instead of crucial; she didn’t have the strength to get up and put him back in the Lucite cart the hospital used to wheel the babies from the nursery to the rooms, so instead of being the most trustworthy caretaker, she was the least reliable. His visits were an hour long at most, so she had yet to diaper him or rock him to sleep (he never seemed fully awake anyway), and although she made the effort to hold him up against her shoulder to burp him (it hurt some muscle below), nothing like a belch had ever been heard. She longed to feel maternal, for a rising tide of sentiment to overwhelm what she thought ought to be trivialities—her discomfort, her fatigue, her loneliness—but she was dead to Byron. He seemed utterly foreign, a misdelivered package.

  Her mother, Lily, appeared on the first day, looking radiant. In her old age, Lily’s jowls, her thick glasses, and her crumpling skin had made her rather gargoylish—Peter once said at a drunken dinner party that he reconsidered marrying Diane after seeing what time had done to Lily—but on this day the wrinkling of age was ironed by Lily’s joy in her grandchild.

  “He’s beautiful!” Lily exclaimed before she was halfway in the door. She had stopped off at the nursery and viewed Byron through the glass, swaddled in his blanket, his eyes closed, his mouth pursed, concentrated on rediscovering his former peace. Lily came into the room, stood still several feet away from Diane’s bed, clasped her little, pudgy hands together, and repeated: “He’s beautiful!”